


marlboro red

by Goose_Boy



Series: grave hags verse [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood, Established Relationship, M/M, No beta we die like stregobor should, fighter lambert, i wrote this in 30 min and am going to bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27535747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goose_Boy/pseuds/Goose_Boy
Summary: "Don't be like that, buttercup."
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Lambert
Series: grave hags verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016085
Kudos: 64





	marlboro red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintsurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/gifts).



> This hasn't been edited, I work tomorrow and honestly just wanted to get this out.

“No smoking in my bar.”

Damp rag in hand and the rocks glass clanked quietly when he put it back on its shelf. Tapped against its siblings all crowded together but at least his line was finished. Fifty of them, cleaned and stacked and waiting to be used again in the next few hours if he was lucky. He was always lucky, but that didn’t change how much he hated having to keep stacking glasses every few hours.

 _Their_ bar, technically, but his name was still on every dotted line. 

Geralt could grunt and grumble all he wanted, but _he_ was the one that had had the idea in the first place. Twenty-two to Jaskier’s nineteen, crossfaded on the floor of their dingy little apartment but as vibrant then as he had been when Jask was five and his father thought he looked best in bruises. His best friend since he could walk, since he could run, Geralt had spoken with glossy eyes and numb lips about their own business, about their own place. Ten years since then but they hadn't changed for shit, still drove each other up the wall and lived in the others pockets like they didn't know how to not.

Geralt could grunt and grumble and bitch, but there was just as much of Jask’s blood in this place as there was his own. 

Sometimes Geralt had good ideas.

“Awe, buttercup, you don’t mean that.”

Geralt’s _brothers_ weren’t good ideas.

That wasn’t to say they were bad people, darlings the whole lot of them, the Rivia boys had hearts of gold that had only gone molten with age. Matched their eyes, went with their smiles and the well-meant hopeful of their souls. 

Eskel was an absolute gem, all shy smiles and quiet thoughtfulness; man could drink a pitchers worth of Man o War’s without a hiccup. 

The flick of a lighter, stutter of flame from the silver flip top and his hand shot out. Plucked the just lit cigarette from between scarred lips to dump it in the dirty water bucket. It went with a sizzle and he swiped up another glass, the first brandy snifter of fifty that needed polished and hung on the overhead rack. 

_“Hey-_ ”

“No smoking in my bar.”

Geralt was a bleeding heart that got his feelings everywhere and swore he didn’t, Eskel read his students papers under dull bar lighting like he didn’t care about his own eyes, but Lambert, well-

Dried blood on his knuckles and he’d left a smear of it on his cigarette, on Jaskier’s own hand like it belonged there. A brand that he sighed at before sweeping away with the rag, dumped immediately into the dirty water bucket just for somewhere to put it. Another rag taken up, a sharp blue glance at the blood blooming at his temple, the luscious roses and violets unfurling their soft petals across the sharp of his cheekbone. Lovely and violent and bruised, a buzzcut angel more inclined to beat a man with his halo than he was to wear it. 

His brothers had a bit of tact, but Lambert bled on everything like he thought he could own it if he did.

“Don’t be like that, buttercup.”

Cage rattle rumble of words from somewhere deep in his chest, like he hadn’t left the ring he’d thrown himself into just a few hours prior. It’d been all over the television screens that dotted the place, because Geralt knew how to keep people even if he didn’t like them all that much. Social anxiety hidden behind a veneer of distaste that honestly did nothing to the people that knew him. Not when the man was bursting with quiet pride for the youngest Rivia, demanded every match be plastered across the bar for everyone to see regardless of if they wanted to watch. 

That fucking rasp and it was like Lambert hadn’t left the ring, not really.

He hadn’t tapped his knuckles quite right, liked the blister and the burn of impact too much for that. Liked feeling the way their skin split and their bones racked under the touch of his hands, he’d never tried to not be a feral bastard even at the best of times. Enjoyed it too much to bother to reign himself in, practically got high off of the buzz of it all. The screaming and the brutality fed into his system like some kind of amphetamine cocktail until Jaskier would have thought the other man drugged if he didn’t know any better. 

He came back from every match wired and ready, bloody knuckled and filthy like Jask could never ignore even if he tried. 

Snifter put in its rack and he turned to find a new rag. Found a hand on his bicep instead, touch a brand even though the sleeve of his shirt as Lambert held on. Gentle and desperate and demanding all at once, there’d be blood on his bicep to match the smear of it he could see on Lambert’s teeth when he was pulled around again. Flush against his own bar like he _hadn’t_ paid for it, like he hadn’t helped install the damn thing and busted his own knuckles for his trouble. 

Lambert had the worst habit of being handsy, but he’d spent most of his life trying to figure out how a single man could be so bloody and gentle in the same breath. 

“Lambert-”

He stood, taller than Jaskier by a few inches since they were fifteen and he knew it. The bar between them didn’t change a damn thing, not when Lambert loomed like that, not when he looked like that. 

He knew _exactly_ what he did to Jaskier, and he’d reveled in it for half their lives now. 

“Fucked him up for you, baby,” Crushed Jaskier’s hips against the edge of his own Gods damned bar and that hand on his bicep skated a hot, heavy path to the back of his neck. Tangled his fingers in Jaskier’s too-long hair that he still hadn’t cut specifically for this reason. Grounded him where the hands he’d smacked onto the bartop didn’t, not with how Lambert licked the words against his lips. “Knew you’d be watching.”

Geralt might be quiet pride for his littlest brother, but Jaskier had always been loud, screaming at the top of his lungs with his praise just to watch the grins that broke across that angular face. 

Years had seen them grow but nothing had changed, still the man’s greatest critic and fan in a single fell swoop and Lambert ate it up. 

Kissed a complaint from his mouth because he _knew_ there would be bruises later where the bar pressed into his hips just like he knew Lambert would decorate the marks with his tongue and teeth. Brands to mark his territory, like anyone else would ever touch something that belonged to a Rivia. 

Jaskier sagged forward with a moan at the pain, into the kiss and felt the way that Lambert bit at his lips before trailing that mouth across his jaw. To the tender of his throat as his fingers fisted, caused tight sensation across his scalp that had him shivering. 

“You close up early so I could fuck you on your bar?”

_“Lamb!”_

Molasses and nicotine laughter against his jugular, the toothy blessing of another bruise as his fingers curled against sleek polished wood. As he _moaned_ , felt the way the other man smiled against his pale skin. 

“Don’t worry buttercup, I’m right here.”


End file.
